


I Wish I May, I Wish I Might

by AndreaLyn



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: M/M, Mind Manipulation, Wish Fulfillment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-10-11 11:24:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20545361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndreaLyn/pseuds/AndreaLyn
Summary: Alex learns the lengths his father will go to in order to have the perfect son.





	I Wish I May, I Wish I Might

**Author's Note:**

> Fair warning, there is a lot of mental manipulation here with dub-con elements in that a life is forced on Alex.
> 
> Thanks to islndgrl777 for the beta!

Alex Manes has only been to Caulfield twice in his life, but both times he’s sent off-kilter by one of the aliens. He’s much younger than the others, though still around his father’s age. Alex’s grandfather’s pride and joy. Back in the early seventies, Harlan Manes had found three pods and had figured out how to break out the alien children inside to bring them to the prison. The legend feels like exactly that. It’s something that doesn’t feel _real_, though Alex doesn’t know why. 

When he does visit, he spends time outside each of their cells, like he’s inexplicably drawn to them. Maybe it’s the family legacy. Or maybe it’s because of the last alien -- the one with the grey curls that always watches him as he passes, and Alex can never shake this feeling at the back of his neck. 

Something is wrong. Something is off. 

He’s only been here twice because his father keeps him away. There’s something about this prison that Jesse Manes doesn’t want Alex to learn about, but if he’s going to follow in his father’s legacy, as he’s meant to (and he wants to, or he thinks he’s supposed to want to), then he needs to be here.

The third time he’s back at Caulfield, the older man with the honey-brown eyes catches his gaze pleadingly. He mouths “Alex” and that sends Alex stepping back with alarm. “Who’s been using real names here?” he demands of the guard, but she gives Alex a wary look and shakes her head.

“No one, sir. We stick true to the rules. We use codenames.”

So why does he know Alex’s name? Why is he mouthing it at him like somehow Alex is supposed to know him?

He’s wary as he watches the older alien in his cell, dragging his laptop so he can sit outside of his cell and watch him. Maybe he’s plotting something or maybe one of the guards has been lax in security protocols and the alien has been able to get inside of his head. Whatever it is, Alex spends the entire time during his third visit sitting there, watching an alien in his late fifties staring right back at him as if he somehow knows Alex.

The strangest thing is that Alex _swears_ that he knows him, too.

He leaves Caulfield that day with the niggling worry at the back of his mind that he should somehow know that alien, even though he’s never been anything more than a subject number to Alex and his entire family.

* * *

Why does he dream of him, only not the way he looks in Caulfield, but younger and beautiful in a chaotic and gorgeous way? When Alex dreams, the alien’s hair is a mess and his eyes are wild and bright. Alex hears the name “Guerin” tripping off his lips and when he kisses him, it’s like the galaxies are twisting together, fighting to create another Big Bang. He feels consumed by a love that he’s never felt before and when the dream starts to evaporate, it feels like someone’s taking away a part of him.

When Alex wakes to Rosa in bed with him, why does it feel _wrong_ in that soul-wrenching way? He rubs at his face and when Rosa makes a protesting noise, he goes back into her arms, but he has no idea why it feels so wrong. She’s been his girlfriend for years, hasn’t she? Which, if that’s true, why does it feel blurry when he tries to think about their first kiss or their first time?

Why is it that when he tries to think about those moments, there’s no pleasure in it? 

It’s like he’s going through the motions because it’s what everyone had expected from them when they had spent so much time together in high school. He shifts in bed to rub a hand over her back, letting her sleepy voice lull him back to those tumultuous dreams, as if he’d needed to be convinced to tumble back towards that man.

He dreams of possessive, passionate, perfect kisses.

They hold each other and Alex desperately tries not to let go, as if he knows he’s going to evaporate into smoke as soon as the dream ends. “Who are you?” he demands, dreaming about a trailer and a narrow bed and mangled limbs and scars pocking his skin. “Why do I want you?”

The alien only smiles at him, sad and fond, and all he says is, “I never look away, Alex. I’ll make this right. Give me time and I’ll make this right, but you need to remember. I won’t look away.” 

“Michael,” Alex comes to from his dream, moaning the name on his lips.

It's been hours since he fell asleep and when he wakes, Rosa is sitting on the other end of the bed, gnawing at her nail. Her eyes are bloodshot and she smells of alcohol, even though she isn’t supposed to be drinking because she’d made Alex a promise to stop, and it’s not even ten in the morning. “Who’s Michael?” is her accusatory, low question. 

“I don’t know.”

He really doesn’t. All that he knows is that it’s a name that falls from his lips with reverence and adoration and love, but when he breathes it out, he feels a heavy grief in his soul. 

“You’re sleeping with him, aren’t you?” she demands, even if her voice is barely louder than a whisper, and she sounds gutted to even ask it. She must feel the way that Alex does, that something is missing in their relationship and that something feels _off_ even though neither of them can put their finger on what it is.

Alex shakes his head, sitting three feet apart from her on the bed. “Rosa, I don’t know,” he insists, and he feels like he’s losing his mind. 

“I’m going to go stay with Liz and Kyle for a few days,” Rosa says quietly, and when she slips away from him, the alcoholic vapors go with her, but rather than clear his mind, it only leaves Alex as lost as before.

It feels like his head is beginning to splinter apart.

Without Rosa there to act as a grounding presence, it seems to get worse. It’s no longer only in his dreams, but his waking moments begin to grow infested by the man. He sees him as a teenager and as an adult and he loves the alien in every stage of his life. Alex Manes is missing something incredibly important to him and he can’t figure out what it is.

He only knows _who_. 

That’s not the only fracture to his sanity. He can feel something else chipping away and eroding at him and that fault line happens to be doubt in his father. Alex should think that his father loves him unconditionally, supports him in everything, and yet it feels like there’s a looming asterisk above his whole life.

Jesse Manes loves him _if_…

Jesse supports him, _but_…

It goes on like for days and soon Alex can’t even recognize the man he sees in the mirror. His steps seem too firm and steady, the love he’s supposed to have for his girlfriend feels false, and every time he thinks about Caulfield, he feels guilty. Something is going wrong in his life, or more to the point, Alex is beginning to realize that maybe this life he’s living doesn’t belong to him at all.

* * *

He knows, now, that this isn’t how it’s supposed to be. 

“You did something,” Alex accuses his father, on his fourth visit to Caulfield. Either reality is falling apart at the seams or Alex is, and he’s not sure which one he wants it to be. He grabs at his hair, trying to understand what’s happening in his head. “I can’t think. I can’t focus. It’s like this other world is crashing into my head and one of the _prisoners_ is in there,” Alex protests, and the man is kissing him and loving him and making Alex feel whole in his head, even now. Those dreams have invaded his waking moments and it’s like every single second he’s consumed by thoughts of a person whose name he knows, but who he _doesn’t_ really know in any single way.

Jesse stares at him with an icy look, unmoved by his son’s plight. 

“What did you do?” Because that’s the other thing. There’s this fault line in Alex’s head that’s telling him not to trust his father. The history that he’s supposed to have known doesn’t match up with his gut, and the boy he’s meant to be (dutiful, a proud Manes son) clashes with the warning bells in his head.

Something in him tells him to get to the alien because he’ll get his answers there.

“Fine, if you won’t give me the answers…” He’s already charging down the prison steps towards the cell where they keep the alien subject that’s been consuming his thoughts. 

“Alex. Alex, listen to me…”

He doesn’t. He charges for the cells, digging out his keys, and when he gets to the alien, he opens the door for him. “Michael Guerin,” he says, and he knows that name, but he doesn’t know how. He’s stuck staring at him and it feels like his whole _life_ is falling apart. He’s in love with Rosa, only he’s not. The first kiss they shared over a guitar melts away and he can feel another one in its place, trying to make itself known, only it’s so fuzzy.

Why is it fuzzy?

Eyes blurry with tears, Alex stares at the alien sitting in his cell. He hasn’t made any attempt to escape, he’s only sitting there and looking at Alex with a sad look on his face. “Alex,” the man speaks, his low voice somehow familiar to Alex in a way that it shouldn’t be. He doesn’t know him; how can he sound like home? “Whatever your Dad did, it’s not permanent, but you need to help break it. You were the focus of the power. I’m outside it and I remember everything, but one minute I was in my Airstream and the next, I was here and I was _different_.”

Alex grabs at his head, trying to figure this out. “I don’t understand,” he pleads, yanking at his hair. “What’s going on?”

The alien slowly rises to his feet, but he keeps a safe distance from him. “I’ve been able to get into your dreams to try and remind you,” he says quietly, “but you won’t believe it if you think it’s a trick. Until you believe it, it can’t unwind.” Michael’s gaze slides down the prison to where another alien lies comatose.

That subject has always been in a coma, hasn’t he? Why is it that Alex remembers otherwise? Why does he remember him in a different prison?

Alex fixes his gaze on the man in front of him, the one he’d called Michael Guerin. He’s in his late fifties, his grandfather found him in his pod and he grew up as a prisoner in Caulfield. Those grey curls have never been a richer color, those hands have always been lined with wrinkles and age as far as Alex should have been concerned. These are the facts that should be true.

Then again, no. No, they’re not. 

“Michael,” he says quietly, and it clicks. This is Michael Guerin. This alien is Michael, and he’s not supposed to be this old. He’s supposed to be Alex’s age, he’s supposed to be _Alex’s_, only he’s been too much of a coward and he’s always fallen in line with what his father wanted.

Only, it turns out, even that hadn’t been enough. 

The memory hits him like a ton of bricks. 

> _“This is insane, Kyle. My father has these notes on all these other aliens at other sites like Caulfield. They’ve been using pods to keep some of them younger, and breeding others. Look at some of these powers.”_
> 
> _“Are you kidding me? Reality manipulation?”_
> 
> _“It must be like some kind of genie’s wish. It looks like they can manipulate reality and focus on one subject to spin it. It looks like they’ve been running tests, and as long as the subject of the change in reality stays locked in, it keeps going while the alien remains in a comatose state to generate the reality. What if my Dad’s been using this alien all along? How would we ever know?”_
> 
> _“Maybe some people are immune? Maybe it’s not permanent? That’d be a huge ripple effect. Maybe it’s a offensive tactic, something that only lasts long enough to get a foot in the door.”_

Alex gasps as the memory floods back and he grabs at Michael’s wrists, bringing him closer. There are dark bruise marks all over his skin, age spots, and wrinkles, but Alex doesn’t care. He searches for answers in Michael’s eyes, like he can somehow figure it out, but he doesn’t need anything from Michael, not when the answer is already buried in his own head. 

He remembers, now. He remembers finding the second prison with Kyle and finding those younger aliens. He remembers the comatose alien in a cell with his father and the notes on the tests that they’d been running. Jesse had been running controlled tests within the prison walls, but when Jesse had found Kyle and Alex there, he’d decided to expand that test and try and solve his problems in one fell swoop.

He really should have let Kyle keep his father in the coma, for everyone’s sake. 

> _“Dad, this is insane! You can’t do this! Don’t do this to me!”_
> 
> _“You were never supposed to find this facility, Alex. That thing has clearly burrowed into your mind and made you do something that you never would have, not if I’d raised you right. I’ll fix that, Alex, don’t worry. I’ll fix everything.”_
> 
> _“No. No, don’t, please, don’t!”_
> 
> _“Go home, Alex. Go home now.”_

“You’re my person,” Alex says, because that’s who Michael Guerin is. “You’re my home.”

He closes his eyes and he leans forward, his forehead against Michael’s, watching as shimmering iridescent colors wash over him and the area around them, like this reality is bleeding away. When Alex breathes in raggedly, he finds himself standing in a control room, with Kyle pressing handcuffs on Jesse Manes. Michael has vanished from his touch. This is where they’d been before his father had gone _fucking insane_ and bent reality in order to turn Alex into the perfect son that he’d wanted.

“Alex, are you okay?” Kyle demands. 

Alex stares at his father with a numb accusatory look, because he’s not sure he can even begin to comprehend the level of manipulative bullshit he’s stooped to, in order to get what he wanted. He shakes his head, because he’s not sure he is, but he has somewhere else he needs to be.

“Can you make sure that you call someone?” he asks, voice rough. “Get someone here to deal with Jesse, then take the aliens to Roswell and let the others know you’re coming,” he says, careful not to say anyone else’s name with Jesse glaring at them. “We’re done, Dad,” Alex says curtly. “I’m not your perfect son. I’m never going to be, because I’m better than that,” he spits at him. “I’m not the dutiful, loyal, _straight_ Manes boy you wanted.”

He needs to get back to Michael, he needs to figure out if he’d experienced that awful life, he needs to apologize, and he needs to beg, but first he needs to make sure Jesse understands one last thing.

“I’m better.” Alex knows that. “I’m braver and I’m stronger than you. I won again,” he tells his father. “Don’t try a third time to come at me or any of my people or I will show you the depths of what I’ll do in the face of _provoked_ violence.” He’s shaking, something that he only notices when Kyle reaches out to gently rest his hand on Alex’s forearm.

He shakes him off because he needs to keep moving. The apology in his eyes is for Kyle, that he's not able to tell him that he’s fine, because he’s not. He’s not sure that he will be, but he needs to go and see Michael, cut through all the bullshit, and see if he remembers the complete breach of his rights that Jesse had pushed on them. 

He’s lucky that no one pulls him over on his way to the Airstream, driving like a maniac at least thirty above the speed limit, but it still takes him over an hour to get back from the prison to the scrapyard. Once he’s there, it takes him a few fumbling steps on his prosthetic to walk properly (because in his mind, he’s still shaking off that false reality, where he’d been so different from himself, but had still kept both his legs).

Staggering to a halt outside the Airstream, Alex isn’t sure what his next move is. 

“Guerin,” he calls out, panic gripping his chest like a vise. 

Whatever urgency had driven Alex here is also there in the way Michael throws open the Airstream door, staggering down the steps, staring at Alex like he’s not sure he’s actually real. Everything that’s happened to them over the last few months goes away for Alex, because Michael is standing in front of him, as young as ever. 

Young and beautiful and not even a little bit Alex’s. 

“Tell me you remember,” Alex begs, because he’s not sure he can make it through an explanation of what’s happened right now. “Please.”

Michael staggers down the steps and approaches him, shaking his head in disbelief. “Your father seriously just tried to break us up by making you straight and me old,” Michael says with a disbelieving huff, drinking the last dregs of a bottle of beer, before he bends to put it in the dust. “That goes way beyond disapproval,” he comments with a scoff.

“It’s not like we’re together,” Alex hates to admit, but it’s the truth. “He hates me that much, I think,” he says, keeping his chin high because he refuses to let Jesse break him, even like this. “He tried to rewrite my life and make me what he wanted. The perfect heterosexual son. He punished me by taking you away from me,” he admits, and it hurts to say all of this out loud, to confess to yet another person how much Jesse hates him. “I don’t even have you and he still tried to break us.”

It doesn’t matter, though. The government is on their way to the other site, Kyle had worked to free the younger aliens and bring them back to Roswell, but Alex needs to be here. 

He’s so relieved to see Michael free and young and beautiful that the awkwardness doesn’t hit for another moment. That’s when he realizes that he’s standing at his ex-something’s home, where he has no right to ask to go inside. Michael had made that plenty clear when Alex had showed up to talk and Michael had told him that things were too hard for them to be anything, because it hurt too much.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Alex says awkwardly, feeling deflated and wondering what had possessed him to come here so fast. Shit, why did he think he needed to see Michael? He could have called him or asked for a picture – anything but this painful moment. “Jesse’s being taken care of, so you don’t have to worry,” he adds, and then gestures over his shoulder, because, “I’m gonna go.”

It’s better if he’s not here right now, he thinks. 

“Alex!”

He stops, but he doesn’t turn around. He’s not sure he can bear Michael’s gentle letdown, telling him that he still loves him, but it just can’t work. He’s already heard that once, and Maria had heard a similar phrase, from what she says (though hers had been along the lines of, ‘It could have been good, if I really was someone else’). It’s infuriating, because it’s not like Alex can even be upset that Michael is trying to focus on his own mental health right now.

When Michael doesn’t say anything, Alex finally turns to see that Michael’s closed the distance between them. He’s stopped a respectable distance away, looking to the side. 

“What is it, Guerin?”

“If I had a wish,” Michael says carefully, “do you know what it’d be?”

Alex can guess. “Yeah,” he says, with a dejected shrug of his shoulder. “You’d wish for Max back.” He doesn’t have to wish for his hand back, because Max had already done that for him. “Maybe that I hadn’t taken off running at my father’s first command.” 

Michael gives him a soft look, shaking his head. It’s a familiar look, the one Michael has on his face when he tells Alex that he doesn’t look away, not really. “No,” he breathes out the word, and his smile is sad. “I’d have wished for a few more mornings where you stayed. That’s it. That’s all.”

Alex heart pounds in his chest and he feels his heart sinking with grief in his chest. “Yeah,” he says, squeezing his fingers at his side, trying to steady himself. “The funny thing about that one is that I don’t need a comatose alien to grant that wish.” Belatedly, he realizes that might be forward, because it’s only been a few months and he’s not so sure enough has changed. “Some day,” he clarifies.

“Some day,” Michael agrees with a nod of his head. He takes the last few steps until he’s close enough to press his forehead to Alex’s, the way they’d been in that prison in that alternate reality in their heads. 

It’s enough to steady Alex and reassure him that everything is back to normal. It’s not fine, because it’s not a perfect life, but after seeing what happens when someone tries to bend reality to make it perfect, he’s okay with that.

“I’ll see you around, Guerin,” Alex says with relief in his voice. It doesn’t matter that they’re still figuring things out, because Michael’s alive and he’s the alien that he’s meant to be. Even though Jesse Manes had tried his hardest to get in the way of that, even he’s not that strong. He steps back from Michael’s hold and lets his gaze linger until Michael heads back inside the Airstream.

* * *

He’s been dreaming of Michael again. 

He dreams of the sun dappling over his skin and his curls, warming them both up. Alex’s skin is sticky and sweat-warmed by Michael’s proximity, the heat he kicks off as powerful as ever. In the dream, Michael brushes kisses over Alex’s chest, and begins to slide those kisses up his neck, towards his lips.

Alex gives a hum of pleasure, but as with all things, the dream begins to fade away as reality sinks in. He turns in bed and sinks towards the warmth on the opposite side of the king bed. Lucky for him, he doesn’t have to go very far. 

Snuggling in and wrapping his arms around him, Alex draws himself in closer. “You stayed,” he murmurs fondly, nipping at Michael’s earlobe before he presses a kiss to the junction of neck and shoulder. 

“You asked,” Michael mumbles, “how could I deny you?”

They’ve been doing this for two months. During the day, they work to dismantle Jesse Manes’ legacy, compile their strategy to use the aliens they find to help out Max, and then they come home for dinner and talking and then curling up in bed together. They haven’t done anything beyond kisses and sleeping, because Michael had been adamant about needing to take it slower.

If this is what slow feels like, then Alex is completely fine with it.

“What’s the plan for today?” Michael asks, turning over in Alex’s arms, stretching out as he burrows in, his eyes not yet open or ready to face the day. 

Giving him a dazed smile, he sometimes wonders if he hadn’t been captured in another dream world. Maybe this is some attempt to make things right, but if that were the case, then he thinks they would have rescued Max sooner and he and Michael would’ve skipped all the difficult parts of their strange courtship.

It’s not perfect, which is why it’s real.

“Day off,” Alex says quietly. “Kyle texted, says that we need to lay low because they’re bringing my father out for a hearing. They don’t want to agitate him.”

“Really? Cuz I’d love to agitate the shit out of my fist in his face,” Michael growls. 

“Down, boy,” Alex laughs, and tugs Michael in by his hips so he can fall back into the warmth of his dream, stealing a few of those sleep-warm kisses from Michael. “I get first dibs, remember?” is his whispered addition, because if anyone is sucker punching Jesse, it’s going to be him. Besides, that’s not his dream for the day.

That happens to be making Michael’s only wish come true by staying for the day, then the week, then the next few months, and if he plays his cards right, then for the rest of his life.

It’s time to cash in that dream of someday and make it today, and for Alex, that’s more than enough of a plan.


End file.
